Thanks
by x.Vivace
Summary: Without much thought to reason, a gut feeling made Arthur run to his barely-used, dust-encrusted kitchen and grab a knife from the drawer. The drawer hung silently open in the thick dark of the night, his staccato footsteps long gone.


**A/N: My teacher let me write fanfiction for a grade. :3**

**Here you go~~~ **

**..**

_He calls the mansion not a house, but a tomb.  
>He's always choking from the stench and the fume.<br>The wedding party's all collapsed in the room,  
>So send my resignation to the bride and the groom.<br>Let's go down!  
>This elevator only goes up to ten.<br>He's not around; he's always looking at men.  
>Down by the pool, he doesn't have many friends,<br>As they are facedown and bloated;  
>Snap a shot with the lens.<em>

_If you marry me, would you bury me?  
>Would you carry me to the end?<em>

_To the End – My Chemical Romance_

..

Arthur Radley awoke to a terrifying shriek—the shriek of someone who was entangled in and consumed by pure terror.

He shot upright in bed at the first soprano trill, his bare chest stricken alive with deep, horrified breaths. A barrage of coughs wracked his pale, bony frame, and another scream tore through the dark, dark night.

A rush of instinct feeding him courage, Arthur swung his legs out of his cold bed and rushed out of his room, barely taking the time to snatch a dirty button-up shirt that had been draped over his metal bed frame. He almost forgot to put it on as he ran frantically through his too-familiar home, his experienced feet padding noiselessly against the cold hardwood floor.

Without much thought to reason, a gut feeling made Arthur run to his barely-used, dust-encrusted kitchen and grab a knife from the drawer. The drawer hung silently open in the thick dark of the night, his staccato footsteps long gone.

The new moon hanged above him with a menacing air as Arthur shut the door to his old house as quietly as he could manage. Being outside came as a shock to him, and he filled his lungs once before another shrill scream brought him back to reality; back to why he'd even come outside.

Instinct took hold once more and Arthur raced across the slick, cool sand of his yard, toward the sound. The ground felt unfamiliar but very welcoming under his bare feet, but the thought of familiarity and unfamiliarity and everything he'd ever thought of was pushed back, back, back into the deep recesses of his brain when his well-adjusted eyes saw the scene unfolding just at the edge of his property.

Arthur raced forward again, even though he was still very much winded from just the exercise of getting out of bed. Nevertheless, he found himself pouncing on the back of one Mr. Bob Ewell, whose name he only knew from the near-silent whispers that reached beyond the towering walls of his own domain.

Ewell—or, Mr. Ewell, as a young man such as Arthur would be inclined to call him—blindly tried to shake him off, but Arthur spotted the girl (ham? The thought of the Finch girl in a ham costume would later bring Arthur quite a bit of amusement) cowering and whimpering, scared, against the big oak tree they (indirectly, of course) shared memories of and his courage and strength was renewed.

Arthur the both of them crashing toward the sidewalk, pinioning Mr. Ewell by straddling his entire upper body. He saw a flash out of the corner of his eye and e knew exactly what it was.

A switchblade.

The man meant business, and that meant so did Arthur. The not-so frail boy gripped the kitchen knife in his right hand, hesitance and reason beginning to grip him.

"If I give you a chance to go, y-you won't leave, will you?" Arthur whispered. His eyes met those of Bob Ewell, and the answer was beheld within them, shrouded in a stubborn hatred and lust for revenge. Arthur's only possible reply was to take his knife in both hands and plunge it between the ribs of the man beneath him, quickly removing it to allow him to bleed himself out.

The struggle and movement between Arthur's legs soon slowed, then stopped altogether, and he replaced the knife in Ewell's flesh silently. The skinny man allowed himself to relax and stood up, regaining the blood flow he hadn't even realized he'd lost in his legs.

He staggered around like a drunken sailor for a minute, searching for the Finch boy. When he came up empty-handed, he felt hot tears forming behind his eyelids. He leaned against the big oak tree and let them fall, coughing into his chest (he realized passively that he'd forgotten to button his shirt), his arms supporting his weight on a low-hanging branch.

"Jem?"

Arthur's heart broke at the fear in the girl's tragic voice, and he couldn't bring himself to tell her he had no idea where her brother was. He held his breath for a response from the other Finch child but nothing came.

"Jem?"

Arthur released his breath in another coughing fit, until movement at his feet made his ears perk. He looked down, and a stirring, half-conscious Jem Finch was breathing heavily and unsteadily a short distance from his feet.

Arthur wiped his tears and rushed to the boy, scooping him up in his thin arms. His body shook under the weight of the healthy-weight, muscled boy, but he stumbled unevenly across the ground, lugging the boy with every ounce of muscle in his morbidly underweight body.

"Atticus...?"

He carried the boy toward his home, and as he was struggling to lift himself and Jem up the steps to the porch, Atticus Finch opened the door. The bright stream of light threatened to blind him, and Arthur lost his balance.

Atticus steadied him and took Jem's right side, helping him lift the boy into the house and down the hall, where they finally trucked him all the way into his own room. Once Jem was properly on the bed, Atticus said in a panicked tone, "Where's Scout?"

The sound of the front door opening and closing once more sounded through the house, and Arthur and Atticus (the latter seemingly just realizing with a hint of surprise who had saved his boy, according to the slight widening of his eyes, and the hint of a grateful smile on his wrinkled, rosy face) exchanged a glance. Atticus stuck his head into the hall and called out, "Call Dr. Reynolds! Where's Scout?"

"Here she is," replied the voice of a regal-sounding woman.

"I'm all right, aunty!" chimed the voice of the Finch girl. "You better call."

Arthur sank into the corner, suddenly self-conscious and not wanting to intrude on the family reunion. He tuned out much of the excitement until the Finch girl, Scout, pointed directly at him, saying something a coughing fit.

He felt himself blush at the sudden attention, pushing himself further into the corner. His palms found the wall, and his colorless eyes widened likening a cow up for slaughter. He forced himself to calm down and assumed a natural, if not a tad awkward stance with his thumbs in his belt loops and a shy, thin smile peeling across his cold, gray lips.

"Hey, Boo," said Scout in a trance of sudden realization.

"Mr. Arthur, honey," corrected the girl's father. "Jean Louise, this is Mr. Radley. I believe he already knows you."

Arthur found himself darkly amused by the "Mister" insertion. He had never been referred to as such, but that was probably because the last time he'd been around people was when he was still a child.

His eyes followed the girl as she trotted nervously across the room to her brother's bed side. Before he could properly react, Mr. Tate opened his mouth, eyes locked on Arthur's own, as if to say something to him.

He was interrupted by the Dr. Reynolds storming into the room with a powerful, "Everybody out."

After a long, long discussion about Ewell's death (most of which Arthur tuned out or pretended to tune out, with no thought toward his distinct involvement), Arthur was preparing to leave when Atticus approached him.

"Thank you for my children, Arthur," he said, clapping him on the shoulder paternally.

His first and only thought was: _The smiling,_ _blushing faces of the Finch children is all the thanks I need._

_._

_If you marry me,  
>Would you bury me?<br>Would you carry me to the end?_

_To the End – My Chemical Romance_


End file.
